Met Sarah Kramer

Kris and I went to the East village on Sat. We had lunch at Teany, on Rivington St., which was actually really good- and the cleanest bathroom in all of NYC :) It is Moby's restaurant, where you can get vegan or veggie food. We shared pasties with potatoes inside a crust and mustard for dipping and a double decker veg turkey and bacon sandwich with salad. The best part- eggcreams with soymilk!

Since we were close by, we stopped at Babycakes on Broome St. for some vegan, sugar free, gluten free and wheat free cupcakes. I always expect friendly people at vegan places- I guess since there aren't too many people with this philosophy. I was kinda surprised how unfriendly they were there, like we were bothering them. The one girl was telling another worker about her drugged out friend. But the cupcakes were pretty good- the wheat free had a hard top, but the gluten free I took home were better. I love the lightly sweetened icing, because I hate when it is sugary sweet. I got chocolate and carrot cake...

Then it was off to Moo Shoes to go buy a pair of Earth Shoes in black and meet Sarah Kramer. She signed my copy of La Dolce Vegan. Sarah is super nice and friendly. She even had her husband Gerry take a pic of us on her camera for her to keep! She is so little and cute. Isa and Terry were there from PPK to see her, too.

Earth shoes have a negative heel which is lower than the front and supposed to help your posture. I am breaking them in now so I can take them to Europe in a little over a month. They are cuter than the picture and have a little flower stiched into the side. It was a fun day!

Broccolli Raabe

Ok, I have to admit I now know I don't like this stuff... My friend suggested I make it with veggie sausage. I browned the sausage first. Then I sauteed the broccoli raabe with olive oil and salt and pepper and garlic. Then I added diced tomatoes and served it over fiori pasta. I was able to get through a few bites before pulling all the broccoli raabe and leaves out of the dish and ate the rest. It was good without it.

My friend Kris came up today with her boyfriend to do our gift exchange and we went to Pure City (vegan chinese) for lunch today... And Kris gave me a really cool mat and nat wallet and a Christopher Radko hand blown glass ornament. Mat and Nat is way cool vegan vinyl.

Have a wonderful holiday everyone...

Fun weekend

I am so sorry I am not out in blog world lately. I wish everyone a wonderful holiday season. My holidays are kinda ruined by a sick amount of work that was forced upon us at school involving essays... Tons of grading and stress. I will be so glad when this is over.

I did have a fun saturday last weekend in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. My veg friend and I went to BUST's Craftacular at the Warsaw for the second year in a row. They are all about DIY (do it yourself) and tons of cool vendors sell fun stuff. I got some great soaps, earrings, presents for people...
We also got a free issue of their fabulous magazine, that is usually very veg friendly. Parker Posey is on the cover this time...


After the craftacular, we walked over to the new Fred Flare store. They were having a carnival of cute and Amy Sedaris was there (from Stangers with Candy)... We bought her new book (not veg friendly so much) about hostessing and she signed it for us :)


Then we hopped in the car, and drove over to Food Swings. It is a vegan fast food restaurant in Brooklyn in a veggie friendly area. We happily ate our mock fried chicken- with a wooden dowel in it, with mac and cheeze and mashed potatoes and slurped our vegan milk shakes- YUM! We had a great day!
Now back to work.... UGHHH!

Time Flies

I know I haven't been on here in forever. I have been dealing with art history and it consumes so much time. It is the end of the quarter and grades are due next week. My students made the paper. We got a pic of my officers and also a write up. It's the first time my name has made the paper as a teacher and was very exciting! The kids are now starting their Pet Stocking fundraiser for the holidays. They sell personalized stockings that are really cute! Check out the article...

Here it is: scroll down to teens help pets

I have been cooking, a lot of tofu, veggies, seitan (I can't get enough of that stuff). Dating has been interesting. There's a lot of wierdos and jerks out there (duh). I met a great guy, but he lives pretty far away, so it may be tough. I went to the MET and SOHO in NYC last weekend and had a great time. Had a fantastic Baba Ganoush platter at a little cafe.

Friday I had off, and after a tough few weeks, planned a "me" day. Manicure and pedicure in the morning followed by a haircut and highlights in the afternoon. I tried a new salon that is closer to where I live. The girl did a fantastic job, but it cost a small fortune. I guess sometimes you have to shell out the money to look good :)

I'm still around

I have been buried under paperwork from school. 5 weeks is coming up and I have been grading projects, doing paperwork, grading art history papers and working on my lectures. Anyone who thinks teaching is a part time job has no idea what we do. My club I run, For the Animals, is getting ready for our Humane Society Drive and we are getting press in our paper this year afterwards. I got permission from my principal and I just got ahold of the women who does the "Shelter tails" column. The kids are VERY excited and so is the humane society!

Sorry no pictures, but I made a Stroganoff with Morning Star crumbles and Tofutti better than sour cream, with no hydrogenated oils. It has onions, mushrooms, mushroom gravy and white wine in it. I served it over whole wheat noodles. Yum! I also tried Wholesoy frozen yogurt in swiss dark chocoloate and it was fantastic! Just made some seitan this morning too.

I have been around the blogs, but very frustrated over the stupid beta thing. I guess I will have to break down and just do it soon. Did a trip to Trader Joe's and Xmas tree shops again on Saturday in Danbury and that was the highight of my 3 day weekend. Went to a Met's game with some friends last weekend and they won. We had a fun time. Dating sucks...

My top 5 fav foods

I was tagged by Carrie awhile back. I have been so busy with getting back to school and teaching and being tired and prepping for art history- sigh... It is finally the weekend and the guy I am seeing went to the shore with his friends... sigh again... So here I am- I had a great birthday, it was an awesome massage at the spa. I just got back from a pedi and a manicure this afternoon. My club at schol 'For the Animals' will be doing their annual food and supply drive for our local shelter in October, so we have to get ready for that. We put drop boxes in the classrooms of all participating teachers and pack everything up for the h.s.- we usually get tons of stuff! Before I get back to paperwork, here we go: Blogger is only letting me post one pic at a time, and stopped after 2, then I lost one of them~ So Annoying!!

My top five fav in no particular order...

1. Homemade chocolate dipped strawberries. Last time I made these, I used a bar of Tropical Source dark chocolate with hazelnuts- YUM! My father loves dark chocolate and he loved them! Everyone said the chocolate was so rich...

2. Tofutti Cuties. Yes- I know they have high fructose corn syrup in them. But I love them... I get the vanilla ones. I have yet to try the peanut butter or fancy flavors because they don't carry them around here.

3. Homemade seitan from VwaV. Love it sooo much pan fried in cast iron and crispy.

4. Stirfry. Whenever I don't know what to cook, I chop up some onions, peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, broccoli and carrots and add tofu or seitan or morn star farms steak strips with some rice or noodles and there is dinner... I chop up veggies like zucchini and peppers and store them in zip lock bags in my freezer. When I need to make this fast, I just take handfulls of prepped veggies and dinner is ready fast.

5. Rice noodles. My new fav obsession. I buy them from trader joes and use them with the above mentioned stirfry or seitan or with broth for a slurpy meal.

Not the healthiest stuff, but my fav foods at the current moment.

Homemade pizza

Every so often I make pizza myself. I do buy the dough premade, I haven't attempted to make it myself- yet. I use 2 pckgs of dough from my bakery at my grocery store, because I find one doesn't stretch enough for my large round Pampered Chef pizza stone. I put cornmeal down on the stone first before I put the dough on. It makes such a crispy crust- yum. Here it is out of the oven.
I had homemade marinara sauce that I made a few days ago, with onion, zucchini, peppers, mushrooms and the trick is some red wine. You have to use the stuff you drink- I put in some Cabernet Sauvingnon. It was just enough for the pizza. I put on black olives (I use an egg slicer to slice them), fresh mushrooms, Italian green peppers and I used a half a block of Follow Your Heart mozzarella that I had thawed from the freezer. The trick is to cut it into tiny cubes, because it doesn't shred well. I learned that from Kenny at Vegan Lunch Cast. I don't know what happened to him- he stopped posting after his seitan tutorial months ago. The funny thing was I spent this afternoon making the VwaV tempeh sausage crumbles, and I forgot to put them on, until 5 minutes before the pizza was done, so I tossed them on top. You have to have a hot oven for the chreese to melt- like 425. I didn't realize the up close slice picture was blurry- so sorry about that!
Tomorrow Kristen and I are going to a fancy spa by me. First we are having lunch at a vegan restaurant that makes Chinese/Japanese food with mock meats. She is getting a European facial and I am getting an hour full body massage and free half hour of reflexology. We are going to pamper ourselves...